قصة الكتاب :
Chūōkōron Shinsha, 2015. 400 pp. ¥2,200. ISBN 978-4-12-
004763-3.
Saeki Kazumi
Born in Miyagi Prefecture in 1959. Awarded the Kaien Prize for
New Writers for “Ki o tsugu” [Grafting Trees] in 1984, the Noma
Prize for New Writers for Shōto sākitto [Short Circuit] in 1990, the
Mishima Yukio Prize for A rūsu bōi [A Loose Boy] in 1991, the
Osaragi Jirō Prize for Tettō kazoku [Steel Tower Family] in 2004,
the Noma Prize for Literature for Noruge [Norge] in 2007, the
Mainichi Art Award for Kaerenu ie [No Home to Return To], and
the Itō Sei Prize for Literature for Watarase in 2014.

“Recently, I have been looking up at the sky more often.” The author, who lives in
Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, began writing his “I-novel” three full years after the
Great East Japan Earthquake. A middle-aged couple, Hayase and Yuzuko, slowly
resume their quiet quotidian routines, immersing themselves in this restoration
several times each day as they consider from the vantage of their housing complex
veranda the animals and plants they live together with under the same sky. Once
this feeling comes upon them as they lie in bed listening to the cries of a hawkowl.
It happens to Yuzuko when she is in the kitchen pickling rakkyō onions and
again when she joins a birdwatching excursion. By sharing moments in which
they can repeat their activities of the previous year, the two attempt to move
forward with their lives.
They did not suffer directly; their house was not washed away in the tsunami
and they were not forced to evacuate by the nuclear accident. The couple, however,
still avoids conversation about the disaster with their close neighbors. They do not
engage in easy banter about their future hopes. This illustrates how deeply the
wounds are buried within Tōhoku people who went through the events of March
11.
They now cherish the everyday world. The firm belief that this is the only place
human happiness can be found is a theme infusing this novel throughout its pages.
(OM)